Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly) and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) in “Wreck-It Ralph.”

Rich Moore, a veteran of such TV shows as “The Simpsons” and “Futurama,” found himself facing a fresh challenge when he signed up to direct the Disney movie “Wreck-It Ralph,” which today was nominated for an Oscar for best animated feature film.

“In television the stories are very circular where you begin at square one, take the characters through a journey and by the end of the episode they’re pretty much back to square one,” Moore said in an interview with Speakeasy. “Whereas in a movie, we’re watching a character evolve.”

To create “Wreck-It Ralph,” a movie about a videogame character trying to find his place in the world, Moore decided to work from the inside out, creating believable characters and finding actors that could play them before refining the plot that would drive the movie.

Moore talked to Speakeasy today about his nomination, his decision to cast comic Sarah Silverman to voice one of the “Wreck-It Ralph” leads, and the possibility of a sequel.

How did you get involved in “Wreck-It Ralph”?

I started working at Disney four years ago, back in 2008, and I came in as a director and when I came in I found out there was this notion of doing a movie about video games that had been kicking around the studio for a long, long time. That was something that seemed interesting to me. It seemed like a great world to set a movie in. But I didn’t want to that movie to be just about videogames, just about plot, action and adventure. I wanted a really solid story at the middle of the movie. I fell in love with the concept of this very simple Donkey Kong-esque character struggling with this very profound and human conflict of what is the meaning of life? What if if I’m not happy with this one thing that I’ve been programmed to do? That was the genesis of my involvement with “Wreck-It-Ralph.”

How did you come to cast Sarah Silverman and John C. Reilly in the movie?

The idea of who these characters were and who was going to play them was determined very early on in the process. It was myself and the screenwriter Phil Johnston, both of us like to begin a project like this from the inside out, with the characters, what they’re thinking, what they represent. The first one that was really solidified in my mind was Sarah’s character Vanellope. Her character, a lot of it was inspired by Sarah’s own memoirs that she had published a few years before I started working on the movie. I would listen to the books on tape version of it, I would listen to it on my iPod, and the part where she would describe herself as a kid, that she was naïve and innocent but wholly inappropriate that was instrumental in the creation of the character of Vanellope for Sarah. With John C. Reilly I wanted someone who could bring real depth and humanity to the character of Ralph.

Not everything Sarah Silverman does is family friendly. What made you think she was right for this Disney film?

I’ve been a fan of Sarah’s for a long, long time. For me, I’ve always seen this angle that everything she does is very naïve and childlike. She got typecast that she was a blue comic, or the mean girlfriend. I thought if we could find the right vehicle she would be perfect. When we made the film, we had a table read of the first draft of the script, which is not done a lot in animation. This is something I learned in “The Simpsons”—every “Simpsons” script at some early stage of production is read before a group of people. We had many of the actors who ended up playing the final parts there at the table read….If there were any questions if she would be appropriate I want to show the group that she was as perfect as I thought. It was a screaming success.

Will there be a sequel?

We definitely left that possibility open. I would love to re-explore the world and see more of it. I think it’s a world rich in storylines. I feel like this movie just barely scratched the surface of what we can do with the subject of videogames.